BONUS | The Waffle House Index: America’s Strangest Dining Minisode

We've been a lot of places together on this show, and I'm trying to think of the weirdest nuclear reactors, the insane asylums, the mouths of volcanoes. But now, by fan request, it's finally time that we visit our strangest location yet, a restaurant. And before we begin, I hop you survived the experience. Hello, and welcome to Doomsday Histories Most Dangerous podcast. Together we are going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre, and awe inspiring but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from throughout human history and around the world. And this is a very special by request not so many so on today's episode, we're visiting an American institution recognized around the world for its bizarre duality as a magnet for cartoonish levels of violence, you know, for an all day breakfast place, and its role as America's most well respected king of disaster logistics. Part one begins now, and for those listening on Patreon, I'm going to teach you how to incapacitate an opponent and pull their still beating heart right out of their chest like your Mala Ram from Temple of Doom. I am not kidding. This is not the show you play around kids, or while eating, or even in mixed company. But as long as you find yourself a little more historically engaged and learn something that could potentially save your life, our work is done. So with all that said, shoot the kids out of the room, put on your headphones and safety glasses, and let's begin. No hope you brought your appetite, because we are going out to eat. Hello, my name's Johnny Knoxville, and today we are visiting the waffle House. If you're not cheering or cringing, we have an awful lot to teach you about this Roman colosseum of the South. If you're not familiar with it. The waffle House is a twenty four to seven diner chain that has become famous or infamous for its conflicted blend of inexpensive comfort food and chaotic behavior across the Southern United States. And we'll come back to that. Every country has its own version of comfort food plenty or cultural dishes, but the most are probably something surprisingly simple or routine. In this case, our comfort food will be a plate of eggs, hash browns, bacon, toast with coffee. It's not fancy but it's hot and fast and familiar. Good food fast. That's what the waffle house promises, and you can find a waffle house at almost two thousand locations across twenty four different Southwestern and mid Atlantic states. With that many locations, that means there's no shortage of places to stop in the middle of the night to fill that stomach when you are half hammered and mentally ill. A stomach full of starch and grease and carbs won't fix a bad day, but it's there for you like an old friend. The waffle house is different when you order something with onions and cheese. The cook here's smothered and covered. You say chunked, diced, peppered, capped, topped, or country. It's all cold for ham, tomatoes, alapinos, mushrooms, chili, and sausage gravy. It's kind of like the way Starbucks refers to their cup sizes in Latin, but less pretentious and way more filling. So that's fun. Well, then there's the jukeboxes. I don't know if you ever heard the Hamburger Helper rap album. Yep, that's a real thing. Sometimes brands want to appear fun or approachable so it put out a catchy, little branded novelty tune. Waffle House has its own record label, Waffle Records. They have been recording songs since nineteen eighty four, serious, actual songs celebrating every aspect of your visit, and they appear on jukeboxes in every restaurant pop, country, gospel, doo, wop, R and B. I even heard a Christmas song. Imagine eating a waffle at three am while a smooth jam love ballad about hash Browns plays overhead. When you eat at a waffle house, you're gonna leave full and happy, but you might also leave with a busted lip or a swollen nose. There's also a chance you might witness a robbery, or maybe some drug use, or maybe an assault on the staff. And rarely, but once in a while, you may see customers square up on each other and begin to battle royale right there in the booths. Yes, waffle house has developed a reputation as an unusual hotspot for sporadic violence, and we'll get into that too. You know how I've always said everything is a weapon. Well, you have no idea how many weapons there are in a diner. There's a very famous video of one customer throwing a metal chair at the head of a young employee in Austin, Texas, Hey, Texas. It wasn't the severity of the head wound she received that fascinated people know. It was how she caught it out of the air one handed, like catching an arrow in midflight. Newscasters later said, you know, you don't mess with the waffle house employees. And I'm not talking because it's not polite. I mean because you won't win. Waffle House employees have lived through some things, but of all the headlines surrounding this place, my favorite has always been beef for breakfast. There's also a joke that their employment application asks if you can fight. I mean, it's not the canteena from Star Wars, but if you come over that counter, the staff aren't going to go to work on you. And to be clear, it's not like some kind of in the no public sparring cafe people specifically seek out as an arena to start or settle beef. It's that it's popular and it's open twenty four hours a day, including those wee hours when drunken people are maybe not at their best. Kid Rock got arrested there Once, he'd stopped at a waffle house in Atlanta around five in the morning when his entourage got into it with another customer and started throwing hands before pouring into the parking lot through a freshly broken window. To quote the man, I've been kicked out of places better than waffle house. And that's saying something. Search the internet for waffle house and fight, and you are in for something. But it's not all gravy smothered biscuits and black eyes. I'm not saying every location is some kind of waffle scented mma octagon, or that every inch of your average waffle house has blood cleaned off it. But and it totally That girl who caught that chair, she said she has cleaned blood off of every inch of her location. So you know, grain of salt, drop of blood. So it's the middle of the night, you're starving. You want to shut your stomach up with some waffles. But the couple at the table beside you argue vociferously and drunkenly about who the real father of her unborn baby is, and she points at you. Would you know what to do? The best fight is the fight you never have. But that said, this guy is coming at you like he has no problem with prison food or getting handsy. We're not going to turn you into shang Chi master of kung fu here, but let's see about how helping you out of a jammie. When I was young, my dad wanted me to be safe, and he taught me a few things that he thought I should know, like carrying around a roll of change in my pocket so that I could land a punch without having to break my fist. He taught me how to judo flip a person by first landing a very solid punch into their armpit. And he taught me how to punch someone's eye out I was in public school. There's a fairly simple poky knuckle technique where you punch at the top of the eye below the brow ridge, and if you do it right, you can deliver a traumatic ocular luxation. But I'm not going to be teaching you how to punch anyone's eye out. The best thing to do if someone throws a punch at your face is put up your hands to protect yourself, like you're holding a phone up to the side of your head. But with each hand they're probably going to be swinging like crazy. So keep an eye on their hands, turn your body a little to the side, and block anything thrown at your head. Think of your hands as a fence that you're peering over. Protect your head and keep your feet moving. Just try to think of the way that you would naturally bob and weave your head and shoulders if water balloons were being thrown out your face. Now you look like you know what you're doing. This is a good stance. If someone's throwing feet too, you just want to lean your head back a bit. You want to treat feet with dodgeball rules, except trying to catch this ball could break your hands. Most kicks are going to be aimed low to the legs or shins or torso, so don't bother trying to actually stop a kick. Just keep an eye on their feet and focus on keeping your balance and moving out of the way. Pretend someone's trying to give you cooties something like that. But let's say this guy throws himself on you, and now you find yourself in a headlock. Don't waste your time trying to pry your way out of there. You want to tuck your chin in to protect your neck, then bend your knees like you're trying to sit down, and turn your whole body like you're trying to look at their belly. This will take a lot of pressure off your neck, and dropping your weight like this lowers your center of gravity. It makes it harder them to control you. Now you can breathe and think, and you are free to speedbag their testicles until the police show up. But it's obviously better to leave before his girlfriend lives up to her promise of driving their truck through the restaurant and killing you. But let's say this guy really wasn't playing and just straight up started strangling you. Well again, protect your neck by tucking your chin to buy yourself some time. And if you could remember to inhale as he's gripping you instead of screaming, that would be helpful too. Then try this. Bring your arms up like you're surrendering, with your elbows bent at ninety degrees and your palms facing forward like you're saying don't shoot now. Bring them inward and bring them down hard, breaking their grip with your elbows. The thumbs are the weakest part of any grip, and with this technique you can definitely break it with enough force. I'm talking about the grip, not the thumbs. Of course, this guy's crazy if they rip their shirt off and they have their own face tattooed on their chest, all bug eyed and screaming. I'm gonna go ahead and say and this now, Now you can apply the throat punch. No one ever ever thinks about how vulnerable they truly are. Anything between their colorbone and their jaw is largely unprotected where there's no bone or real muscle to protect anything, and it is utterly punchable. A short, fast punch or a knife hand strike should do the trick. In martial arts, a throat punch like this is generally reserved for life threatening self defense situations. It's only advised to use it when you are in grave danger and you have to disable your attacker immediately. It causes choking and gasping and sudden interruption of breathing. It's super great. However, it could also collapse the trachea, which could knock them out or kill them. So maybe think twice about how you use this technique before you develop your own taste for prison food. Now, for my Patreon listeners, i am going to explain not only how to incapacitate, but how to pull the still beating heart out of an opponent's chest. I was not kidding. Now, after hearing all that, what I am about to tell you may seem deeply ironic and counterintuitive. So how does America's eighth most popular breakfast place keep people safe? Well, we don't apply to the waffle house if you don't have at least a yellow or a purple belt. And they don't put a map to the hospital on the back of the menu. They don't really sweat the small stuff. They choose to protect their customers on a much grander scale. And this will sound weird, considering we're talking about a place that offers hash browns and a broken knuckle. But waffle House has come to be known as a beacon of reliable intelligence and normalcy in times of turmoil and natural disaster. Whether the power goes out, or the waters rise or the trees start falling over, people across the South realize, no matter what nature threw their way, the local waffle house seemed to be the only thing reliably still open during a storm, or at least the first thing to reopen after dangerous weather passed. Even with the power still off. As long as the building still stood, it remained a guiding light to the weary. It's got to be hard for the guys at Duncan to be nailing wood paneling across their windows while watching the guys at waffle House put up storm specials like it's nothing. Part of its appeal is how every waffle house is the same. They all have the same griddle, the same songs playing on the jukebox, right down to the clock on the wall. They're all the same layout, and for people put out by disaster, that sameness can be deeply comforting. Familiar sights and smells and sounds trigger associated memories of feelings of safety or routine, so familiarity can be emotionally soothing when you're out of sorts. It reinforces the idea that the world still works when you have no other reason to believe that's true. But a tornado could drop you into a waffle house two states away and it would still feel the same. All of this might sound like a joke, and in a way, it kind of started as one, but the so called waffle House index has become a legitimate and strongly valued instrument for public safety. Waffle Houses being open or closed became a very real, very useful barometer of how significantly a storm will or has affected a community. The idea of the index was born in the mind of a man named Craig Fugate. You mean, the head of FEMA from two thousand and nine until twenty seventeen. Yes, I do, same guy, And those were record breaking disaster years. Let's see, under his watch, America got his teeth kicked in by the Joplin and more tornadoes, Hurricanes Sandy Harvey, irma Irene, their floods in Louisia, Jenna, Texas, Tennessee, and Colorado. Endless wildfires across California. We did a whole episode on that, and one big mud slide in Washington State that cost sixty million dollars and killed forty three. After years of coordinating relief efforts for event after event, he noticed a strange pattern. Waffle house almost never closed. He started using the waffle house's open and closed status to understand the needs of the people closest to each location. If waffle house was still serving its full menu, then things were probably manageable. If they were only serving a partial menu, that meant they were probably having staffing or power issues in the area. They made it easier by color coding and laminating different versions of their menu. The blue menu is the normal menu, everything from waffles to steak to eggs. The Yellow menu is their limited operations menu. They only serve items cooked on gas powered grills that don't require refrigeration or deep fryers. Pre cooked and shelf stable stuff you know, meats, eggs, toast, no waffles, though they actually draw too much power from generators. The Red menu is mostly bring your own menu items. They'll have coffee, bottle drinks, snack packs, and maybe sandwiches, which is limited but much more comforting than looting from a vending machine. Craig Fugate told reporters one time, if you get there and the waffle house is actually closed, that's really bad. The waffle House Index was adopted by FEMA and disaster response planners across the Gulf Coast, and your safety is actually planned around waffles and bacon. During Hurricane Matthew in twenty sixteen, waffle House had to pull out the red menus. This had been the first time since Hurricane Katrina back in two thousand and five and each time rare as they are that they do have to do this. This immediately prompts FEMA to bulk up and speed up their response. By Hurricane Florence of twenty eighteen, they were quoting the waffle house index in press briefings. The company actually tracks storms more than a week out so they can figure out where to move eggs and ice to staging areas safely outside of a storm's path. They maintain a small fleet of mobile command centers. The one that I saw was an RV named e M fifty. They named it after Bill Murray's urban assault vehicle from the nineteen eighty one movie Stripes. And from these vehicles they share color coded maps of restaurant locations that are about to be hit or recovering from storm damage. They share it all out on social media in real time. The green code means that the restaurant is serving a full menu and damage in the area is limited. Yellow means smaller menu and they're probably getting power from a generator and food supplies are lower. Red means the restaurant is closed. They might not have walls, the grill is cold, conditions aren't safe, and don't just there staring at the sign head for the hills. And this may seem hard to imagine, but waffle House was not created with any of this in mind. It was founded simply enough in Avondale, Estates, Georgia, in nineteen fifty five, when two neighbors, Tom Fulkner and Joe Rogers wanted to create a sit down restaurant that blended the friendliness of a diner with the speed of a fast food restaurant, a quick serve, all day breakfast place. Interesting point both men were born a year apart, served in World War Two, and then died one month apart in twenty seventeen. You wouldn't think such humble origins would spawn the bravest, toughest, and most resilient business in America. Waffle House locations are famous for having stayed open through hurricanes and tornadoes and blizzards and blackouts and floods. Fast forward to today, and waffle House has an internal disaster preparedness playbook more robust than some state governments. Mobile command centers and crisis supply trucks with generators are ready to deploy at a moment's notice, and before that they've already mapped out every alternative supply route in case of road closures. And for the staff. The waffle House doesn't just hand you an apron and say good luck. They put you through a little something called waffle House University. I'm not kidding. Their managers are trained in disaster logistics. The hurricane playbook, for example, explains how to reopen and what to serve if say they had gas but no electricity, or you've got a generator but no ice. They account for everything. They know how to run a full restaurant with only half a kitchen, how to reroot delivery trucks around washed out roads, and how to get generators up before the power company even knows there's a problem. And they do all this while wearing a yellow polo shirt and listening to do Wop songs about toast. Sometimes the warm, comforting glow of the waffle house sign shines like a kind of a civilian lighthouse in the rain, before emergency crews have even cleared the roads. It's often one of the first signs of life returning to normal. Like we said, it became the place you could depend on to stay open when people needed somewhere to warm up or dry out or charge a phone, or wait out a tornado, or get some stitches or grab a hot meal. Reading barometric pressures and spaghetti models of potential storm tracks is confusing, and waffle House just makes it easy for people. If they could see the comforting yellow hug of the waffle House sign blown away, they know they're okay. So from a business point of view, restaurants typically have a fifty percent chance of shutting down inside of five years, and you've probably heard something more like ninety something percent. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics would like to disagree. And because of this, most businesses will drop a whack of cash into advertising to stay relevant or interesting and maintain their market chair. But waffle House went a different way. The waffle House spends almost nothing on advertising. Its strategy draws from the good will gained from being open when customers are most desperate. Waffle House has become a bonafide American institution. It's what I call a lynchpin institution. By definition, lynchpin institutions are ones that play an indispensable social or political or cultural role within a larger system, a place so connected to the community's well being that without it, the whole system would suffer. And there are so few places we can look to as a beacon of hope everyone turns to in dark times. I mean, sure, there's churches and maybe even city hall if your city's any good, But waffle House offers something more concrete. We know we are living in the weirdest of timelines when an all day breakfast place becomes the most reliable go to you for critical support or survival in a disaster. It's got a forty year old sign, it's got forty year old menus. And yeah, you do have the option of hopping onto social media anytime you like, if you want to see a man in a wheelchair beat a pair of teenagers to death with a broken toilet seat. But I hope you'll remember waffle House not for the teeth it might have collected over the years, but for the hearts it's warmed and touched along the way, touched like figuratively, not touched like Mortal Kombat. The fact that this syrup flavored hub of safety and security on a bad weather day also represents your best chance for a black eye or a broken tooth at three am on a good weather day provides a world class exercise in irony. There's just no version of this where it doesn't sound wrong. And the best description I heard was America's Last Open Door where brands like ihop, Denny's, and Cracker Barrel just but I guess just want to see you die. Waffle House might be part joke, but it's also part restaurant, part fight club, part life saving early warning system, and all day breakfast. Waffle House is more than just a restaurant. I mean, McDonald's doesn't offer any kind of safety and comfort, and to my knowledge, Zaxby's doesn't even care if you live or die. Waffle House is the place people go to feel like they're going to be okay. It's kind of the same reason people listen to this show. And on that note, two quick things. I'm going to continue this minis out in the future with a sequel exploring an unexpected way that this show profoundly changed my life, and not in one of those Martha Stewart Hallmark cards. My heart grew three sizes in one day kind of way, more like discovering you were separated from a secret twin kind of way. It'll be a tale more personal and private than I've ever shared, and that's only going to be for my patreons. In the meantime, I do hope you enjoyed this minisod and maybe even feel a little safer for it. Just knowing you can show someone their own beating heart has got to leave you with a little more confidence and swagger. Let me know if you have a hometown horror or miniso that you'd love to hear about, Because I make no secret of the fact that I will spend hundreds of hours making your awful dreams come true. And I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. Before we go, let me just say that, if you like the show and don't want to see me have to take on a part time job as a line cook slash referee at an all day breakfast place slash food dojo, why not consider becoming a supporter of the show. The best way to support the show is actually just to share the show. But the best way to prevent your favorite host from developing a weird whistly lisp from all the broken teeth that is new job is to support it by putting me in your will. Of course, failing that, you could just visit me at Buy me a coffee dot com slash Doomsday and make a one time donation. And I really wish you could see the sincerity of my face when I say how much I genuinely appreciate anyone who does that. You are responsible for keeping the show going, and if you think getting episodes a little early, with no sponsor interruptions and additionally ridiculously interesting material in each new episode is worth it, you could visit Patreon dot com slash funeral Kazoo and learn more. You can reach out to me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook as Doomsday Podcast, or just fire me an email the doomsdaypodat gmail dot com. Older episodes can be found wherever you found this one, and while you're there, please leave us a review and tell your friends. I always thank all my Patreon listeners, new and old for their support and encouragement. But if you could spare the money and had to choose, I always take a moment to ask you to consider making a donation to Global Menic. Global Medic is a rapid response agency of Canadian volunteers offering assistance around the world to aid in the aftermath of disasters and crises. They're often the first and sometimes the only team to get critical interventions to people in life threatening situations, and to date they have helped over six million people across eighty nine different countries. You can learn more and donate at Globalmenic dot CA. On the next episode, the worst thing about a natural disaster is waiting for it to finally end. And to best prepare you for our next episode, I would like you to try and scream for three minutes straight. It's the Greensburg tornado disaster of two thousand and seven. We'll talk soon. Safety goggles off and thanks for listening. It was just after two while I was driving on too, I was sleeping. I need it to the coffee, all yellow sign up the street. I walked through the door as the wagress would change. When I turned to my right. I saw something real stranger. I did a double tape, and I goodn't leave my eyes. You know why. Last night I saw Elvis at the Wuffle House tops. He was sitting there in a boot checking his menu out. He looked straight at me. Somebod try not to stand, but I knew it was him with that jet black hair. Well, last night I saw Elvis at the Mabble House. He motioned to the waitress coming bore him half of come. He pulled out his sunglasses and said to her, whevery much. Went over to the juke box and looked down the list, chopped in a quarter and played the ditions chips. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. That's right. Last night I saw Elvis at the Wobble House. I saw he was sending in a mood and checking his menu out. He looked straight at me, and so I tried not to stare, but I drew it with him with that jip like him. Last night, I saw Elvis at the Wobble House. Here we go, I can't play that thing. When he paid his fee. He stood right next to me. I could see him on his ring. The letters t see me. Last night I saw Elves at the wuffle House. Last night, I saw Elves at the Wuffle House. I saw he was sitting in. A booth checking his menu owls. He looks streaming me. So I tried to stay, but I knew it was him with a girl stair. Last night I saw was having my house. I ain't kidding, man, that was him. I know him. Anywhere, and his card turned up some classes. Oh he's driving to Scotch Phil. I know him anywhere. Man. He came walking in there. Kill me, and that was he. He ain't fluent me. I'm not that big of He can and I got some